“Because we’re in the tech world, we think everyone has already used large language models. They haven’t,” he said. “The overwhelming majority of the population on this planet has never used one. The first place most of them will use one is with us. Just by virtue of making them seamlessly part of tools they already use, and in places that they already live, like in group conversations.”
The theme of making technology accessible to a mass market ran through the entire Connect keynote, from the integration of new technologies into existing apps and devices to the comparatively low price of the company’s new VR headset, which it is positioning at $800 versus Apple’s upcoming Vision Pro at almost $5000.
Instagram posts edited with AI will come with tags showing the terms used, so others can try them for themselves.
“It’s not just that we launched a mixed reality headset, it’s that we launched it at this price point. The innovation can go in any direction you want, and we’re pouring a lot of innovation into making things cheaper,” Bosworth said.
“The same is true on the AI side. It’s all fine and good to create one of these models that makes a great-looking image. We’ve seen that before, but people have not done the work to make it accessible on a mobile device, and responsive, fast.”
Meta is also bringing its main AI assistant to its VR headset, and more notably its new smart glasses. Rumours of revised glasses built on the previous Ray-Bans Stories with added live-streaming capabilities had been around for a while, but the addition of AI puts them in a different category. Zuckerberg said at the keynote that glasses with cameras were the ideal format for a personal assistant because they could see and hear what the user could.
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Meta’s AR (augmented reality) device product manager, Hind Hobeika, would not be drawn on when exactly the decision was made to put the recently developed chatbot into the glasses, but said it was a great match.
“The timing was just right, I will say that. When we designed the [original] glasses, we wanted something that enables you to stay present, but also stay connected. But we knew that we wanted to give users more, and really empower them with the ability to access all of the internet, almost,” she said.
“The addition of Meta AI just felt like it would further enable the value proposition that we want for our users.”
In Australia, the AI will not be present in the $450 glasses at launch, and when it does arrive it will be limited to simple questions and answers, from factual queries to more creative topics like cooking. Meta has announced a partnership with Microsoft’s Bing that will eventually give its AI access to search the internet, and an update next year will let it access the camera and microphones on the glasses when requested.
The Ray-Ban and Meta Smart Glasses work with tinted or prescription lenses.
Examples the company gave included identifying landmarks or translating signs, which some AI apps can do now but only if you pull out your phone and point that camera at it. Hobeika said the functionality would be an extension of the original idea of the glasses; letting people complete tasks seamlessly that would usually put a phone screen in front of them. Of course, the obvious endpoint of the format is that the glasses will eventually have see-through screens too, for visual feedback.
“I think you’ve seen hints of what we are looking at, making the glasses have more superpowers so that you are able to connect better, and have more information,” she said. “We are working towards AR glasses, as Mark [Zuckerberg] mentioned at Connect a few years ago. And now we’re building the foundational technology and investments so that when we get to that place, there are wearable glasses that you can seamlessly use that are integrated with all your apps.”
One Meta product that was almost entirely absent from Connect was Threads, the Twitter-like built on Instagram which some recent reports have suggested has failed to grow its users substantially after an initial boon. Would these new AI innovations give a point of difference to the new platform?
“It’s still early days for Threads, and we are focused on building consumer value first and foremost,” a Meta spokesperson said. “We lean heavily on machine learning to rank the content we show and recommend on Threads, and will continue to keep AI in mind as we further develop the app.”
And how will Meta make money from its new AI products? Those who have followed Facebook for a long time would likely suggest that Meta will be mining as much content from user interactions with its AI as it can to target ads. But the regulatory situation is very different now than it was years ago. Meta is keenly aware of the need to draw informed consent and has even begun processing a lot of user information locally on device for its VR headsets.
In chat apps, users will be able to create new stickers on the fly just by describing them with a few words.
“As is traditional to Silicon Valley, and certainly to Mark Zuckerberg, we start by finding a great product, finding product-market fit and then worry about the business model later,” Bosworth said.
One possibility he suggested would be to use AI to iterate ads and adapt formats so that advertisers could see returns from less work, while another would see businesses using Meta AI agents for messaging and sales. The company already plans to allow creators and businesses to make their own personal bots at some point in the future, though it hasn’t announced any pricing.
“There’s tremendous opportunity that we do see in the very near term, though it’s worth noting that I don’t know when it’s mature. I don’t know when those are available. There are a bunch of things that we have planned,” Bosworth said.
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While the question of regulating access to user data has been weighed up over a long period of time, generative AI brings new questions that are yet to be tested. Artists, authors and creators the world over are complaining that the engines have been built on their creative works, and that the AI output is a form of plagiarism or stealing. Regulators are widely yet to determine on that.
“There’s an active and open question on intellectual property law, of what are the rights. When I read a book and I’m inspired by that book, and then I do a different thing, I’m allowed to do that. What is our ability to use a tool to do that for us? We don’t know yet,” Bosworth said.
When asked specifically about the AI-generated stickers that are rolling out to Meta chat apps, which will effectively replace commissioned artwork, Bosworth said people who previously created a certain type of art may simply be out of work. “I don’t know how this is going to play out for those specific individuals. But the history of our species is that tools of this kind create more than they destroy. Is it a bad thing that more humans have access to create visual arts? Probably not.”
The author travelled to California as a guest of Meta.
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